icarus
by blossom in ribcage
Summary: Zuko has always flown too high, wanted things he can't have. Written for Zutara Week 2017.


"You're going to blow yourself up someday."

Zuko wipes the sweat off his brow with his sleeve, muttering a few of the best curses he learned in the navy under his breath, then can't help but smile as he sees Katara at the edge of the courtyard. "Don't make me tell your uncle on you," she continues to scold, her hands on her hips. "I saw that explosion. And the one before that. Are you supposed to be doing this alone?"

"Sorry, _Mom_ ," he says, rolling his eyes as she throws her arms around him for a moment. He counts the seconds— one, two, three— before he forces himself to let go, to not think about the way her body fits against his. "You remember that I taught Aang everything he knows, right? I can take care of myself."

Her face falls a fraction when he says Aang's name. Aang, a bitter corner of his brain tells him, can't take care of himself, and probably never will— not with Katara always swooping in to spare him any heartache. "He's just out back with Appa," she says, still using her mother voice, "so quit that when he's here, okay? He's a mess during monsoon season."

"I get it," he says more sharply than he intended, feeling a sudden stab of guilt— Aang is his friend, his best friend. Closer to a brother, even, and he can't ever forget why the crack of lightning during monsoon season makes him crawl under tables. "You look good," he adds, though it's a lie. She looks tired, worry lines already beginning to form on her face, and yellow was never her color.

"Don't say that." She crosses her arms under her breasts and stares down at the ground, folding into herself like an origami crane. A couple of minutes, a careless phrase— that's how long it took to destroy the facade. "Zuko, please."

He tries to reorganize his chi, get rid of the emotion, but with her right next to him, the most he can do is crackle a hint of static between his fingers. How funny that he took a lightning bolt for her, and now her presence in his courtyard, in his head, makes it impossible for him to form one. The old wound burns as he reaches out to brush her hair, and she pulls away. "I love you," he blurts out, the words painfully inadequate. So what. So what that he loves her. Aang loves her too, in his childish, simple fashion, and that's just another burden on her shoulders. "Still. I can't just turn it off."

( _Stay with me_ , he wants to get on his knees and beg, the same way he'd once begged for her elusive, slippery forgiveness. _Can't anyone ever stay with me?_ )

"Then try harder." Now he's peeled back the layer of maternal concern, the part Aang thinks makes up her whole, and reached the polished steel— sometimes, he's convinced he's the only one who's ever stared into her darkness and not recoiled from it. He knows darkness, and knows temptation, too; knows the tiny, tiny steps that take you down from the latter to the former.

"Just tell me one thing." He breathes in deep, feeling like his lungs are collapsing. "When you said you wanted to heal my scar, down in the catacombs. Would you have done it?"

 _Would you still do it?_

She leans closer, takes hold of his bicep—

"Zuko," Mai calls from the gate— dressed simply, without her entourage, their daughter in her arms— and Katara breaks apart from him like he's a hot stove. She's smiling a little, which means she didn't see, or maybe it just means that she doesn't want to bring scandal to her door. "Izumi's missed you." Her usually smoky voice lightens as she shifts her. "Izumi, look, here's Father. Fath-er."

"Dada," Izumi gurgles, reaching her tiny arms out for him, and there's a brutal twist in his heart as he scoops her up and cradles her against his chest. He murmurs something soft he remembers his mother humming, rocking her. He would never hurt his child. He would never even dream of it.

"Mai, she's beautiful," Katara says, leaning over to coo at her and tweak her nose, and the worst part is that he knows she means it. "I've brought so many presents from the temple for her, she's going to just drown in them. _Who's_ an adorable baby seal-pup?"

"She's spoiled enough as it is, but thank you," Mai says with just a hint of bite in her tone. "Your husband's looking far too pleased with all his fangirls swarming him out there. I'd go take care of that, if I were you."

"I'll be sure to," Katara says, putting on exaggerated good humor, and flees the scene with one last look at him. Now they're alone, Mai's face as inscrutable as ever, but she's judging. Always judging, and lately, he's come up so very lacking.

He is a man of honor, and he can't betray his wife, and that's the end of it, really. Mai doesn't love him anymore, her passion long chilled since he trapped her in a cage of her mother's design, but she plays her role to perfection. She promptly gave him a child, whose stable home he refuses to disrupt. She entertains the wives of his best generals and visits war orphans and helps manage new hospitals. She spends countless hours up at night with him, plotting ways to fix the economy and acclimatize soldiers to life in peacetime, prevent civil unrest. The people love her dark, girlish charms, despite how little she's ever tried to woo them— maybe because of that.

If the boy king ousts Fire Lady Mai and brings home a Water Tribe peasant to take her place— snatches her from the Avatar's grasp, no less— there will be riots in the streets.

"Mai," he starts to say, but he doesn't know how to finish the sentence. His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth, his chi swirling around in so many fractured patterns. They both need to end this farce, at least to each other, but neither one wants to crack first.

"You should be more careful," she says, her mask never slipping as she takes Izumi from his arms. "You're going to blow yourself up someday."


End file.
